Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 057: Seattle, Washington. Steven Rinella talks with houndsman and wildlife biologist Bart George along with Janis Putelis from the MeatEater crew.

Transcript

Ep. 057: Seattle, Washington. Steven Rinella talks with houndsman and wildlife biologist Bart George along with Janis Putelis from the MeatEater crew. · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is a me eater podcast coming at you shirtless,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: severely bog bitten and in my case, underwear listening Don't
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Make You Eat podcast. You can't predict anything, all right,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Bart George, there you are a month ago. Yeah, getting
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: a bit on the arm by a mountain lead lay that.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: I'll lay that all out for me. Well, how that
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: all happened? Um? Yeah, I wasn't thinking about it at
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: the time. I guess what it led all up to it,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: But um, we're starting a project. It was the first
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: day of a project with a new crew, UM putting
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: collars on cougars and Washington up in the northeast corner,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: an area that I'm very familiar with and feel comfortable
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: running the dogs around. Um. Anyways, I was the hound
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: handler that day and had my four dogs and found
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: a nice tom track. UM in the snow. Yeah, we
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: had about it was I don't know, just before Christmas
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: something like that, So we had about eight inches of
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: snow on the ground. UM found a good track fresh
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: last night and figured we're gonna pop it up pretty quick.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: So I put the Nosy, the little tiny dog that
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: we hunted with, and then Radar, the big male. UM,
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: I put that that's the greatest name for a dog
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: in the history of dogs. Is a good name? Knows
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: not knows he's a good name. You get to know,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: knows he's a little better. You'll agree. No, No, there
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: has nothing to the dog. I'm saying, like, if I
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: ever get a dog, I was gonna name my next
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: dog high Ball among the name of Radar. You don't mind, Yeah,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: I don't mind. Put a junior or something, maybe Radar Junior.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: So there are you, Nosey and Radar, right. Um? So
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: I put those two on the track and there they
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: smoked it for like four yards and then they had
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: a loss, which you know, I'm not able to keep
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: up with them. They get out ahead of me there
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: four hundred yards in no time. And you got a
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: GPS collar on the dogs. Yeah, I've got collars on everybody.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: So I'm watching the collar. And there's a handful of
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: us now you know, the state biologists and um a
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: grad student, and we're trying to figure out what's going on.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Like I said, the first day of the projects, there's
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: still some you know, introductions and that kind of stuff happening.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Who like who's who? Right? Yeah, can you explain a loss.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: You say, well, you got to back up before that
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: when he says watching the collar. You have a handheld
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: GPS unit that shows you where you are and shows
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: you where the dogs are based on the little GPS
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: units that are on their collar, right, so it's a yeah,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: it's a transmitter then from the collar back to my handheld,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: so you see yourself relative to your dogs, like you
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: see everybody on there right now, I know where all
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: the dogs are. I know where I'm at. And then
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: there's also of course the map layer of the road
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: layer and stuff like that. Um. So I'm watching the
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: dogs and they get out, you know, four yards and
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: they have a loss where and I can tell it's
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: a loss because they're like they lost the track. Yeah,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: they're moving the track well, and you could hear them,
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: of course at that distance. They got out of hearing
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: and you're watching the GPS unit and you'll see it
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: where they kind of start circling and doing different things,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: and you can tell they're looking for a track. And
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: sometimes that's because the cat made a kill, um, and
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: there's tracks everywhere. Sometimes the cat would you know, walk
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: out and turn back and walk on its own tracks
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: and that will confuse them and they have a hard
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: time finding an out track there. Um. So anyways, I
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: had one of those going on and it took quite
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: a while. Um there's a fairly long loss, but they're
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: far enough in where you know, I could take off
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: and walk to them, but generally by the time I
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: got there, they'd have sorted it out and taken off. Um.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: So I'm trying to give him a chance to work.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: And I decided to kick Whisper loose, who's kind of
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: the old dog, um, pretty good at line and out
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: a tough track. I put her on the track thinking
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: that she would get everybody together. But by the time
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: I let her go, and you know, in while she
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: was en route, the dogs split, So I had Radar
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: going one way and Nosy going another, which is a
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: little bit unusual. Um. And when Whisper got there, instead
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: of pulling everybody back together or getting everybody on the
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: right track, Whisper went with Radar just automatically. He was
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: probably making more noise or whatever. Um. So those two
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: ended up taking off on a backtrack and Nose he
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: turned out to be on the right track, of course
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: at the time, and you know, at the time I
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: didn't know that obviously had no idea. Um, so I'm
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: still fairly close. I'm within a half a mile of everybody,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: and knows he's kind of working up away from me
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: and radar and whisper kind of paralleling the road that
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: I'm on. So I'm able to get closer to them
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: and listen and see what they're up to. And while
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: I'm doing that nose, he starts showing treat and what's
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: that look like? Um, Well, like I said, I can't
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: hear her. She's now eight tens of them mile away.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: So I'm looking at the GPS unit. And when the
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: dog sits still for I think thirty seconds or whatever
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: setting you put it on, you get a little tree
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: symbol that just shows your dogs not moving. Um. Then
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: it shows you how much it's barking. They can yeah,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: but knows he's um hers doesn't usually register. She pretty
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: You don't get the barks permitted that dog. No, I
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: don't know if she's just too quiet or what's going
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: on there. She she barks, but um, yeah, I don't
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: know. I I don't usually get it radar, you know, I
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: get a p p MS at a radar anytime he
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: opens his mouth, but he not really, so I'm not
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: concerned that it doesn't show her barking at this point.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Um So I started up towards her, hoping, you know,
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: thinking maybe she's had another loss and she's just not
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: moving or she's sometimes they get hung up. Why aren't
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: you thinking that it caught the line? Uh? Well, I
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: was hoping that was the case, but I was still
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: because Whisper and Radar were on this other track. I
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: was still thinking that they were right, and she was
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: still searching, trying to figure stuff out. Um, I don't know.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: I just trusted the two dogs more than the one.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: So when you know, I got within maybe four yards
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: of where she was, and I had Tipsy with me,
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: the young dog. Who's she's I say, she's but she's
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: you know, three and been on a lot of cats
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: and knows the routine pretty well. Um I had her
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: with me in the box, so we got out. I
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: had her loose, walking down to nosey to see what
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: was going on, and I couldn't hear her barking, which
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: then I was pretty concerned because I knew she wasn't
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: treat at that point. Um So we walked down into
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: kind of a swampy area similar to where we were, uh,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: where we found your cat. You know, there's a lot
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: of tracks around he's been living in there. Pretty tough spot,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: um for a dog to work. And we got down.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm watching the GPS unit and I can
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: see her caller showing like eighty yards. I'm still not
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: here and her and I'm showing fifty ft and I
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: can't hear her. And you're thinking it got killed by wolves.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking at that point, I didn't know. I didn't know.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Maybe she was in a river down there. I didn't know.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: You know, I've had a dog one time get hung
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: up on a stob at a caller, you know, get
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: a stop through its collar, and it was just sitting
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: there quietly, just waiting for me to come get it.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: So I was hoping something like that. UM, but I
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: obviously was concerned. I hadn't seen any wolf tracks yet,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: so I didn't think wolves had killed her. Um. And yeah,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: down you know, twenty ft or whatever, and I'm it's
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: fairly open and there's a you know, the trees are
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: pretty open and they're heavy with snow, so all the imagine,
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: like a Christmas tree is heavy with snow, and it
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: builds this kind of cave underneath the pulls the branches
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: down to the ground. So Tipsy walks over to one
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: of those, and it was strange, she never smelled anything.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: She was still Another one of her dogs came and
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: found you. Tipsy was with me with me and Radar
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: and Whisper is still working on a trail and knows
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: he's missing at four of them. So Tipsy starts showing
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: like a major concern around this tree m She walks
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: over kind of to the entrance I guess, to this
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: cave or whatever underneath this tree well, and she lowers
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: her level and her ankles go up and she starts
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: this growl, and at that point I knew what was
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: going on. So I walked towards her to get ahold
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: of her, and I'm sure now, I'm like, okay, the
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: cat's got nos he's got her dead underneath this tree
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: is probably eating on her. Um. I want to get
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Tipsy out of there before I ever wreck with this
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: cat and her. So I walk over and I leaned
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: down to grab Tipsy and I'm, you know, six or
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: eight feet away from the entrance to this tree well,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: and that cat kind of steps towards me, and that's
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: the first time I saw him. Um. So I how
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: close is no? Six or eight feet away? Its real close. Um.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: I still don't see Nosy, but I know she's there. Um.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: So I grabbed Tipsy by the collar and I started,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: you know, hollering at him, and I back off and
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: UM kind of put a little angle so I'm not
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: like blocking his way out, and you're not toting the
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: firearm or anything. I didn't have a gun with me.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: I didn't have bear spray with me because it's not
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: bear season. Um yeah, no gun. Um. So yeah, I
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: back off maybe fifteen or eighteen feet and I'm hollering
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: the whole time, screaming at him, and he kind of
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: backs it back into that hole where I can't see
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: him anymore. And so I put a little bit of
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: angle on that cave entrance so it doesn't feel like
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: I'm trapping him in there. And uh, I start, you know,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: I'm still screaming and screaming. He won't come out. So
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: I grab a stick and I'm just gonna toss this
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: stick in and you know, spook him out right. Um,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: which always works if you just throw a snowball at
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: a cat, it'll jump out of a tree or whatever.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: So I'm thinking, toss a stick at him, get him moving, um,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: get him out of there. So I break this stick
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: off and I've got Tipsy on a leash nowo to
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: my left arm, and I take this stick and I
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: just kind of under arm toss it over to the tree.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: And the minute that it hits the tree, he just
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: blows out. And he's coming towards me, and it's close
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: like fet like I said, So it's happening quick, and
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking, like in my head, I've got this dog
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: attached to me at this point, the cats underneath the tree,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: and I'm like fifteen or eighteen feet from it, and
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: I I just want to get my dog out of there, right.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: I want to get Nosi's body out of there. I
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: want to get my collars off of her. I just
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: want to be out of there. You feel a little sad?
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Are you feeling sad for the dog? He's like your buddies? Yeah,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: totally my buddy. Yeah. At the time, there's a lot happening. Um, yeah,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: I wanted to get I was whatever. I figured. I
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: knew that knows he was dead. I wasn't gonna you know,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I had to get Tipsy out of there safely, had
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: to get myself out of there safely, and I wanted
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: to make sure I got Nosi's body out of there. Um.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: So I take this stick and I tossed it at
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: the tree and the cat just immediately blows out and
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: he's coming straight at me. Um, like accidentally on purpose.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Well that's what I thought, right, because you know, it
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: happens fast, but you're you know, it's kind of in
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: slow motion in your mind as it's happening. And this
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: cats coming towards me, and I'm thinking, okay, there's snow
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: coming out of the tree, and everything else is confused,
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: doesn't really know where I'm at. And he just keeps coming,
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: and you know, I've got Tipsy on a leash, losing
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: her mind, and I'm thinking the cat's gonna stop or
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: turn or do whatever, and it just keeps coming and
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: coming and coming until it makes it big jump towards me.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: And um, I had her on my left arm, so
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: I kind of turned the right side of my body
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: to him, and he hit me on the right side
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: and knocked me down. Hit you with what front feet?
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Yea I don't think he ever actually got teeth on me. Um,
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: So he cut me a little bit on the right arm,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: knocked me down, and I had my backpack on luckily,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: so I kind of bawled up underneath my backpack. And
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: I think Tipsy was just as shocked as I was,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: because she was still pretty quiet at this point, or
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: she was quiet again, and the cat kind of went
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: to work on my backpack and I could feel him
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: up there, and I could feel his weight on me
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that. And then Tipsy I heard the
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: dog fight start, you know, And I don't know if
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: he attacked her, she attacked him or whatever. But so
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: while he's working on my backpack, I hear this big
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: dog fight happening right on top of me. They kind
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: of move off to my right side, and so I
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: rolled in my back and now they're all they're all
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: piled up kind of my right hip pocket and Tipsy
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: hooked to my left arm. So it's a weird position
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: to be in and they're fighting, and um, I rolled
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: in my back and I started kicking him, and you know,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: you don't have much power anyway. I'm wearing rubber boots
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: and I'm kicking him the best I can, and he
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: gets off a tipsy and he starts back towards me,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: and he's kind of right between my legs now and
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: I'm still on my back and I'm kicking him in
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: the face and chest trying to get him away, and
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: he's he never, like I said, he never got his
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: mouth on me, but he was hooking my gaiters and
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: stuff like that. Yeah. So when you say he has
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: some puncture wounds, I thought, so you had just like
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: a little marks. Yeah, yeah, little hooks. Um. So as
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: I'm kicking him kind of off more pushing him away,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: like how many seconds have gone by? I don't in
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: contact with you. I don't know. Um, you know, the
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: whole closer of water ten probably ten. It seemed like ten.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know, it's probably ten seconds. I was. It
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: lasted longer than I actually expected. I thought, maybe just
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: give me a swat on the way by or something,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: but he was he was pretty interested in me. Um,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: I'm glad I had Tipsy with me. So I'm laying
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: on my back and Tipsy's on my right side and
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: got my left arm pretty well trapped, and he's working
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: on my feet and trying to get up towards my body,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: and then he stops and he circles around to the
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: left where I'm kind of vulnerable, and I turned just
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: enough to give him both feet and just kind of
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: push him away, and that's when I was able to
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: get to my feet. And Tipsy's at this point, she's
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: fighting mad, she's barking, and she's, you know, at the
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: end of her lease, trying to get at him. So
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: he must be ten feet away from me or something.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: And we're just kind of in this standoff where we're
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: sitting looking at each other and he's in full position.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: You know, he's down like you would imagine him to be,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: like in a crouch is. You know, he's working his
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: tail and he's looking at me. He's pretty focused on
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: what's going on. Um And he sat there for a
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: long time the same ways. How much pounds later, okay,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: how much? So we're kind of having this stare down
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: for a little bit. And again that's probably another five
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: or ten seconds, and and then he walks kind of
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: walks the semicircle back towards the tree where knows he's at.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: And of course the whole time I'm screaming at him.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: You know and carrying on, make a lot of noise
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: at dogs barking. Um, where are the other biologists that
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: you're with, They're still don't know any this is happening.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: They don't know any of this is happening. Because I
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: went in to get nose he lined out and figure
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: out what's going on. I was going to call them
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: if we were treated, um, and I had them listening
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: to those other dogs to see what they were doing.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: And they're the ones that the tranquilizer gone. They've got
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: the dark gun. Um. So yeah, he finally kind of
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: walks off and then he got maybe twenty yards away
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: and jogged off. So I was glad to have him gone,
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: and I didn't want to come back, and I wanted
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: to get nose he gathered up and go take inventory
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: on myself and on tipsy to see how bad she
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: was hurt. And I walked over to the tree to
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: gather her up, and that dog hopped to her feet.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: She was like buried underneath. I don't know if she
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: was unconscious and the cat buried her like a kill,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: or if she was just playing dead and the snow
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: fell out of the tree and she didn't move, but
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: throughout that whole you know, screaming match. She never got
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: to her feet until I walked over and was like
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: underneath the tree looking for her, and she hopped up.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: She was in tough shape. She had holes in her
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: head and across her back and back of her neck.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: But it's kind of a miracle she's alive. You guys saw. Yeah,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: we stitched her up, not very many because they're all
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: puncture wounds. There weren't any long cuts. Um, it's not
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: like gash has a bit, more like like tooth march. Yeah,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: she's yeah, um up. And you know he had a
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: hold of the side of her face, the right side
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: of her face, and put a several holes in the
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: top of her head and underneath the kind of on
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: her jawline, and then across her back. She had a
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: bunch of holes, probably from clause. He probably gathered her
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: up that way and then hit her on the head. Um.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: So she ended up with five drains, you know, the
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: latex tu being drains in her and handful of stitches
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: putting those back together. Now what percent recovered as the
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: dog now, uh, she's treats several cats since then. Does
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: she have a renewed vigor. Yeah, she's like more cautious. Now.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know, I haven't seen her well now she's
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: she's right back where she was. I don't think she
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: missed a beat. Actually, she's had cats bail out of
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: the tree and she's right on their case. She's not
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: like more blood thirsty. She's always been pretty bloodthirsty. I
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: don't think she's I mean, she's a she's a good
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: little hound. Um. I wonder if she wasn't unconscious, because
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: I would think that would really blood. No, l they
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: don't like chase. Someone told me. I think Floyd was
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: telling me one of his dogs got scratched up by
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: a line and he thought that he came out extra
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: excited about running line. Yeah, they I mean, hounds aren't
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: real smart dogs. By the way, it wouldn't chase lines
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: right to be bird dogs or something. Do you know,
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I totally disagree with that sentiment. I don't know. So
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: you guys went back out like there was a debate,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: right that you should maybe go kill the cat because
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: he's no kind of mixed it up with a person
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: who was that not a serious debate at all, Um,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: not really a serious debate on something, you know, It's
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: not like I was just out hiking and this cat
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: pounced on me or something. You were asking for it. Yeah,
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: I was knocking on his door. Um So, Now we
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: didn't really talk about like youthanizing that cat. I you
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: know knows he was in tough shape. I was unnerved
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah right, Yeah, it shook me up a
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: little bit. Um it was that your first skirmish with
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: the mountain lion. Yeah. How many mountain lions have you,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: um been either like the you treat or were present
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: for the like? How many mountain lions have you encountered
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: hunting and in in your professional life as a biologist?
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: Oh jeez, I don't know a lot, um more than
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: a yeah more, and never had a skirmish with one. No,
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: I've never had a cat even look at me. Like
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: when this cat looked at me underneath the tree, I
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: should have known that it wasn't impressed by what by?
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: What is so like? It wasn't intimidated, not at all. No,
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: um So I should have known right then. But again,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: there's a lot happening. I got my dog under there,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: and you know, it's do you get a little bit
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: complacent after however, many cats right, you don't I think
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: it's ever gonna happen. Had you ever heard of something
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: like that in your final work? Um, well, Floyd's buddy
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: joke up attack by one, I didn't hear that story.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: He got his ankle and foot all chewed up by one,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: and I don't know. I mean again, he's been running.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: I mean he's treated. I'm sure in the hundreds, mart,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: I heard a story that I thought to be untrue
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: about some guy in the whatever Southwest States that treat
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: a lion. There's two of them, and a lot of
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: times cats will focus on a person down underneath the tree.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: You know, they'll pick one person out out of a
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: group or whatever, and they'll kind of focus on them,
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: and that's not unusual. Um, but this story went that
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: the guy's were underneath the tree and this cat was
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: kind of watching this guy and whatever. When he got
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: the opportunity, the guy turned his back and the cat
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: jumped out of the tree over the dogs and landed
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: on this guy and was like working on him. And
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: I always thought that that was untrue, but maybe it wasn't.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: Your believer, Yeah, it might be, but with all the
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: dogs around still, it still sounds like a tall tale.
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: This guy, Joe Mitchell, the guy on top of Mouth,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: the got chewed up by one on his boot. I
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: think it was a little bit bad, like he had
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: had some work done on his foot. Um. Oddly, he
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: likes two things which I think are completely incongruous. He
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: likes running lions and he likes playing golf, which is
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: just like you. I mean, he's like, yeah, And I
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: was saying to him, but how could you golf, because like,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: lion hunting is so challenging and hard, and how could
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: you do something so like kind of benign and you know,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: like unmasculine his golf, you know. And he said, man,
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: you got a golf all the time just to be
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: shitty at it? Yeah, he was. He felt he found
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: the challenge there. I wonder how that attack went. I
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: got Yeah, he told me the story. I remember the details.
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: But then so, okay, so you guys still want he
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: wanted to put a collar on his line. No, the
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: one that got you. Now we're over this line come
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: out of you were chasing in the first place, to
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: put a collar on it for a predation study, right,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: So you'd watch where his lion goes and he'd see
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: that he kind of hung around the area and you're
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: going there and see what he killed. Or you had
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: deer note wearing kyle and when they got killed, you
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: go see who killed him. Right, So the state has
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: a study going. They're going to call her I think
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: fifty deer and whatever, fifteen cougars um and that's right,
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: we'll get a point cluster from a cougar going and
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: investigate to kill. That's what the grad student was there for.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: I think this and so this work. When you got
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: scratched by its cat, that was what you were trying
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: to do, right, But you guys went back and caught
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: the line accidentally. Yeah, um, how do you accidentally catch
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: a line? Well, so accidentally the same line, accidentally, the
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: same line as you were, like out with a vendetta line.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: I wasn't after that line. So were you avoiding that line?
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: I was a little scared of that line because all
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: he was unpredictable. Yeah, like they usually go up a tree.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: He didn't want to go into a tree. Well with
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: one dog though, I wouldn't necessarily I mean for nosey
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: to get attacked like that. Okay, that's not that unusual anymore.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Like people used to run with one dogs. You don't
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: do that anymore ever, because of protect forest protection. What's that?
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: What do you mean like you're protecting the dogs by
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: having multiple dogs though right cats have I don't know
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: if cat behaviors changed whatever. That's sort of the conjecture
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: at this point, Like people Bruce used to run one dog,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: used to guide his sons with one dog, and he
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: did it for years, um until the dog got killed
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: by a lion. Um. But yeah, everybody's kind of upping
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: the number of their packs right now. And I think
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: maybe we've had three dogs ambush this year by lions. Yeah,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: so this is kind of an emerging trend with lions
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: and learning how they're like developing a different strategy on
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: dealing with dogs. So in all three cases, it's been
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: a single dog that got out in front of the pack.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Um that they perceive a single dog differently than a
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: group of dogs. Ye, and they outweigh him by I mean,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: how much is how much is the dog that got
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: scratched up? Way, She's thirty two pounds that day at
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: the vent and I think, yeah, there's no contest. Yeah,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: that's why it's surprised me. And would ever bother to
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: run away from him. Well, you've got to think about
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: you know, lions live out there. It's silent. They're not
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: vocal animals. Really, they don't make a lot of noise,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: especially a big solitary tom. He's not making much noise. Um.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: The only noise he ever hears is like if he
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: snatches a calf or a faun or something you briefly.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: And also it sounds like Holy hell. Coming to the
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: roads of those dogs has to be an unnerving, pretty
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: stressful deal when you know a whole pack of dogs
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: flies up on you like that and they just pop
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: up a tree. Um. Yeah, I think I was telling
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: you this. Like my Boddy re Emmy this year. He
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: was watching some lions on a kill and some wolves
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: rolled in and the lions just popped up the tree,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: took a nap, right, you know. It's like they've done
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: it a hundred times. That's and that's I mean, maybe
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: that's why dogs are fighting more now. Not like I said,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: nobody knows. All the hound hunters are talking about different theories.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Theories you know, um probably may probably reasonable. And this cat,
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: being as big as he is, if one wolf rolls
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: and he and killed that wolf too. That doesn't mean anything.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: So I think maybe he's just sick of getting run
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: off of kills, you know, every time he kills a
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: dearyelk if a wolf rolls in and takes it from him,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: he's over that. So after a while he's like it's
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: not going to work out for him anymore. Um. But anyways, Yeah,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: we don't really know what the deal was with that cat.
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: He Uh. Yeah, the way we accidentally got on him.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: We were hunting south of kind of a main road
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: that day by a couple of miles. And how many
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: miles from where the scratching occurred. Yeah, like I said,
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: a couple of miles from that spot. So the next
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: day we went like four miles or the next day
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: we went to a different drainage and caught a cat. Um.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: I actually called a friend in to bring some dogs
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: because I was like, Stacy wasn't into the idea of
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: me taking any more dogs out, and yeah she was.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: It was like, your wife said, you can't use these
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: dogs or run lines anymore. There was a brief moratorium
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: on cougar hunting for the day. Yeah, we had a
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: more torment eating black bears in my house after trickings.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: I know, I know what you're saying. It's kind of
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: waited out and yeah, so that took a little while
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: to kind of get ourselves back together, um and whatever. Yeah,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: it was unnerving. It was spooky for sure, like you
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: just don't expect that. And I needed to get my
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: you know, feedback in the water right away. I didn't
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: want to take a break, but um, yeah, I was
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: not ready to put my dogs back on a cat
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: just yet. Um. So anyways, I called a buddy up
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: who's got really good dogs, and we caught a cat.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: The next day. Everything went exactly the way it was
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: supposed to. Um, I did have one dog with me.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: I had tipsy that day. Um, all the dogs were safe.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Of course, we got a dart and him safely collared released.
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: Everything worked perfectly. So we're feeling pretty good. When you
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: hit that line with the dart. How long does it
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: take for the dart to take effect? About five or
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: six minutes? No, um, fairly quick. But um, you know,
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: if a cat jumps out of a tree and takes
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: off with a dart in it, we have all the
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: dog is tied back. Obviously, they can go quite a
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: ways in five or six minutes. So you put the
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: dogs back on them. Um, risk because the dog, because
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: they can't, might fall asleep on the ground, right and
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: the dogs chew it up. We can't have that happen. Um.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: So the way we would do that is then just
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: put a dog on a leash and track it that way. Um,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: you catch another one, catch another one, go smoothly, everybody's
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: feeling good, projects back on track. Um, got our first
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: collar out, feel good about that. We go to another
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: spot and cut a track looks like a tom track,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: pretty good size, and we're the same day as the
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: other collar one, now the day after that. So two
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: days after the dog got attacked a little the same
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: day as he caught. Another day after that one caught one.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: Then the following day we went back out just like
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: whatever Wednesday. And you're saying, first collar of the whole study. Yeah,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: so the the attack happened on the very first, say morning,
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: an interesting way to kick off. Yeah, yeah, it was
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: a lot of drama to start with. Um. So on
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: day three we go out, we cut a track and
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: we're you know, I look like whatever majorun Google Earth
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: or whatever else. We're six miles from where nosey got
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: gathered up so pretty good distance two days across the
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: main road, you know, across a big drainage. We didn't
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: expect it to be the same cat. Turned out that
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: it was. Now, how do you know that? Though? I
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: hope it is, uh, because just the behavior of the cat,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: the size, the behavior, proximity. Um. We ended up on
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: a really long chase. We put Jared has good fast dogs.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: They ran this thing like over several drainages. We ended
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: up on a super long chase. Finally say ran so
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: actually like in pursuit. No, no, no, just track. And
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: he was a traveling cat. He was a traveler. Yeah,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: you know what this is. This is an important thing.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: And I know we harp on this all time, we're
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: talking about lines. We might as to take a minute
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: now to talk about this. No on the way this out.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Then you then you run with it or correct me
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: where I mess up? When when people when you're running
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: a lion track, it's not like like for the bulk
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: of that time, it's not like the lion is thinking,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: holy shit, these dogs are chasing me. I'm gonna go
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: run all around and try to get away. Right, they're
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: way behind him in time, and and in distance possibly
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: and for the bulk of the chase, as it's called.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: The lion has no idea that this is going on,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: probably until moments before it ends, when almost sudden he's like,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: what's that noise and runs up a tree. Right, But
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: he just out doing his business hunting. Yeah. When I
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: say we ran that cat for a long ways, we
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: didn't run the cat. We tracked the cat for a
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: long way, tracked his past movement, that's right. So you know,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: we're running yesterday's track and we're trying to freshen it
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: up and figure out what that cat has done in
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: the last twenty four hours. Um. So it might take
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: us all day to do that. Um. But by the
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: time the dogs catch up to the cat, the actual
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: chase is probably four or five yards. Like the cat,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: here's the dogs coming. He might get out of his
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: bed and start moving away from the noise. But a
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: cat cannot run those dogs, um for any length of time.
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: So when he gets jumped when you know, that's what
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: we call the jump. When the when the dogs get
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: him up on his feet, moving or whatever, it's a
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: really fast thing. Seconds seconds. Yeah, if they if they
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: run you know, five yards. That's gonna be pretty long one.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: So once those dogs get a visual on that line,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: and the line gets visual on the dogs, he's not
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: going to think I'll just run for miles and get away. No,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: he can start jumping up giant cliff faces, you know. Sometimes, Yeah,
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: they can. It's real unusual in our country, you know,
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: you hear about that though. Sometimes they'll if they climb
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: up a cliff face or something like that, they can
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: get some space on the dogs, or if they go
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: someplace they can't get um. That's possible, but again, it's
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: not like this foot race where the cats just doing
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: all these tricks and whatever. Yeah, like it might be
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: he's up on a cliff face because he happened to
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: be up on a cliff face and the dogs happened
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: to find him at a point when he was up
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: on a cliff face, or they tracked to the base
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: of it and they can't get up it, and he's
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: then jumped moving away from the dogs. I got you.
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: I imagine it's not too different than if you startle
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: like a house cat that you're not familiar with and
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: it's not familiar with you, whether it was like with
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: a dog or kids, or whatever it's like outside, and
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: you also just like see a cat that's chilling Austin.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: The cat is just oh my god. He runs up
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: a tree. It's probably very similar to that. Right. He
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: just goes from like this whatever he was doing, loafing
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: around to being sort of surprised, and he's like, what's
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: the easiest way to get out of the situation, And
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: that's that tree right there, right. Lions especially are that way. Um.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: I think lions, once you get them jumped, you know,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: I think they lay and just listen to those dogs
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: come quite close before they get concerned. Um, but once
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: they realize that the dogs are coming for them, they
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: take off and they probably climb pretty quick. Um. Bobcats
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: will outrun dogs. Yes, I've had bobcats on chases, walked
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: past me at you know, ten yards, and I've kicked
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: fresh dogs on them, and the podcast still outran us.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: They have more stamina, they can absolutely outrun a dog,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: and they're a little bit lighter scented, so the dogs
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: can't run the track quite as quickly, so they have
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: a pretty major advantage there. And bears can outrun dogs,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: which surprises people. Bears can they'll smoke a group of dogs. Yeah,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: so you get the lion. So we get the track. Okay,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: we got this cat finally starting to like, we think
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: we're on the fresh end of this track. And this
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: is a huge you know, it's a forty five minute
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: drive to get back around the next drainage where we
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: can get close enough to even get a signal back
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: on the dogs and figure out what's happening. This is
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: an all day deal. Um. So we get this cat
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: in this canyon, we think we're close. The dogs are
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: really moving the track more quickly. Um, and then we
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: start getting a tree single, so we start their way,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: you know, walking down this steep, nasty canyon. The dogs
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: are all showing tread and then they'll break tree and
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: you'll hear this. You know, once you're in hearing, you
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: can kind of figure out what's going on. So you
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: hear all the dogs barking tree like they're looking at it.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: It's a different bark, and then all of a sudden
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: gets super excited and their move and they'll go back
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: to tree again. So let you know, the lions jump
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: in the tree. That's right, So what you know the
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: the great humor is Jerry Clower calls it tap in
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: the tree for some reason, tap the tree, which means
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: it left its tree, in reference to Racoon's Really Yeah.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: You know Jerry Clark, he used to get up between
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: sets at the Grand Old Operation tell hunting stories. You
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: should get yourself from Jerry Clower's CDs. I'm gonna have
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: to most about coon hunting and a lot about dogs.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: His dog was high Ball. Okay, I was gonna steal
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: his name. Now I'm stealing your is a good dog name.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: So how the cats moving and jump in and um
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: had Jared's dogs on the race again, and I had
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: a Tipsy with me, and then James brought a dog along.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: So we have these six dogs that are all fast,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: and you're letting all these dogs out because this thing
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: won't get into a tree, and state point let it
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: out because we thought it was treat. So I dump,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: you know, we have all that we dump. Uh Tipsy,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: like I said, I still call her a pup. She's
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: been a lot of cats. She's three. And then James
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: dog is actually a pup. She's like a year old. Um.
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: So they raced down the hill and we hear, you know,
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: they hear him get to the tree. And now there's
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: I said, there's all six dogs are there. We think
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: we have this cat caught. It's in a it ends
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: up climbing a big cedar tree. We feel good about it. Um.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: The state crew shows up, biologists and um the grad
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: student and we're getting things set up to dark this
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: cat and with whatever, all five or six of us
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: standing around and the dogs and we're trying to get
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: the net set up to catch it if it goes
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: under in the tree and falls. And the cat just
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: finally said it had enough and climbed down out of
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: this huge tree that it was sixty ft up, climbed down,
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: jumped over all of us, and then refused to tree again.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: So now he's just walking and fighting dogs, which was
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: a problem. Um. And it's just blow down, it's steep,
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: it's getting dark. I mean, this is like the worst
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: place in the world to do this. UM. So we're
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: at this point like thinking we need to just get
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: the dogs off of this cat and get out of
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: there before somebody gets hurt or one of the dogs
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: gets killed. And so probably took you know, twenty minutes
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: of you know, catching the cat on the ground and
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: trying to get dogs gathered and then you see in
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: the cat. Yeah, we're on the count the whole time,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Like Jared and I are like right on him all
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: the time. When you can't shoot it with the tranquilizer
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: because you gotta catch the dogs where you tranquilizing, right, Um,
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: And we want it in a safe spot and whatever.
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: Brian's running the trank gun, the dark gun, and we're
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: just you know, we're just there to handle the dogs
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: at this point, which means now we're just trying to
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: get the dogs out of there. Um. We're all pretty
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: well fed up with this cat. And we get finally,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: you get this cat caught in a blowdown, and we
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: think we can get all the dogs gathered and just
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: pull them. Um. So Jared slips in to start getting
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: leashes on dogs, and UM, I'm about fifteen yards downhill
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: from them, and I'm like still headed their way, and
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: Jared starts pulling dogs out, and that cat comes out
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: from underneath the blowdown, and I think it's the first
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: time he'd actually really got to look at us and
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: knew what was going on, and he looked at Jared
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: and started at him through all those dogs. Yeah, it
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: was terrifying. Um, so Jared had one of the you know,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: saw the cable leashes that we used with a clip
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: at each end, and it was still clasped. Jared's whipping
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: this cat in the face, trying to get it to
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: just stop, and the dogs are you know, all over
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: its case and it's like focused on him, which is
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: a weird, unnerving kind of thing. Um, so, yeah, I
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: have my gun with me this day. Um so I
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: have my gun out, but there's dogs everywhere and the
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: cat's very close to Jared and you don't want to
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: shoot a cat unless you like absolutely have to. And
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: at this point, I'm thinking, now there's pretty good chance
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: nobody's going to get hurt yet. Um the cat turns
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: and takes off, and he finally climbs up on a
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: leaning log about eight feet high, and he's war out.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: Now he's been like he's been in like a twenty
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: minute scrap and he's on this log and you can
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: see he's breathing pretty heavily, and Brian was a able
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: to slip a dart into him, so we were able
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: to you know, and then we darted him with the
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: dogs loose still, but we were able to tone the
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: dogs and pull them back off once we had a
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: dart in him and he ended up going out on
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: that log. Basically, toning the dogs is the GPS color
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: has a shock feature and then also a tone feature,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: So the dogs are trained to stop what they're doing
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: if you tone them. When you're training them, they know
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: that the shock follows the tone. So once they figured
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: to add out, they just do what you want when
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: they hear the tone. Yeah, once they're broke to that,
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: they they pretty much do whatever you want when you
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: hit the tone. So we got a caller on that
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: cat that day, which was nice. Ye, he was a
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: big tom. He's a hundred forty eight pounds um broken tooth,
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: had a busted off lower canine. We aged him at
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: about eleven years old, so he's as old as he's
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: gonna get probably. Yeah, he's on his way out. Yeah,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: he's probably been defending that territory for half a decade.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: You know, he's been up there for a long time,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: seeing a lot of stuff. So again, did you guess
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: that that casts been treated before? Maybe? You know what,
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: maybe not legally they wouldn't. There's no hound season there,
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: but um, I guess back in two thousand and eight,
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: and nine. They were doing some hound hunting there. Maybe
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: he got treat then, but yeah, I don't know why.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know why you had the attitude other than
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: just being old, you know, kind of like the old
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: man was kind of over all this nonsense. And how
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: when you guys go out. I mean, I saw how
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: it happen when we were hunting, But like, when you're there,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: how are you It sounds kind of women you say like, oh,
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: we caught a track, Like isn't that? There's there's more
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: to it than that, Like how are you guys cutting tracks?
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Because if you task a lot of people and you said, hey,
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: go find me a mountainline track this morning, they're not
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: gonna find a mountline track. Yeah, most people wouldn't. Um, well,
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: we have we have pretty good cougar densities up there,
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: and as winner gets on, you know, they get even
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: more dense. So finding the track, if you know what
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: you're looking for, is not that hard. A lot of
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: time time, Um, you look, you're working off a deer hurts. Yeah,
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: we're looking at winter range, so we're trying to hunt
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: or you know, we're trying to whatever capture near deer
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: and elk herds. Um so to find you know, like
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: finding this track. We know that that area has quite
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: a few deer and elk in it. We know there's
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: going to be a cat anywhere there's deer and elk
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: in that area. Um so we cut the track and then,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: you know, the harder part isn't just finding a track.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: The harder part is figuring out where it's at and
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: finding the freshest track we can for the dog's sake.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: You know, yesterday we were hunting and are trying to
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: capture a cat and we ended up getting on what
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: wasn't the fresh end of the track. He'd crossed the
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: road several times, and we you know, misjudged which track
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: was which, and the dogs ended up spending all day
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: working and they ended up right back at the road
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: at a track that we already knew was there. So
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: we just messed up. So the hardest part is figuring
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: out which track to turn loose on if even if
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: it's the same cat, to get the freshest senter do
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: you like running? Uh? We put this way in your
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: life of chase amountain lines, has more has more of
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: it been functioning like as a biologist, or has more
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: of it been functioning as a hunter. More of it
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: has been as a hunter, um for sure, but not
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: necessarily as like a consumer, like we treat mostly cats,
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: We treat our for pictures and dog training purposes. Um. Yeah,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: like that thing that surprised me. As houndsman who've chased
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: lions their whole life, how few lions they ever actually shoot? Yeah?
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Well that's just how many lines do you really need
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: to kill? Right? I don't want to kill a whole
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: bunch of cats. I'd rather chase him and let the
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: dogs get the work and you know, show somebody else
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: a cat. It's kind of fun. It's fun to take
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: somebody new out and show him a cat and let
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: them take pictures. Ever, ever, it's exciting for people and
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: learn about. I mean, I feel like that the work
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: that you guys are doing, I mean, it's not like
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: it's been done a million times before, right, right, you
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: guys are gonna possibly gain new data that it's gonna
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: you know, Yeah, the study that the state's doing is
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: going to be it's pretty robust. It's gonna generate a
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: ton of cool data for sure. Um, but yeah, I
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: think you know what you said about hound hunters, like
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: not killing that many cats. Most most town hunters aren't
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: in it to kill the cat necessarily. We just want
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: to chase it and get the dogs in the woods
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that. So when I was when we
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: went out, so I heard it was bart this December
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: and we went out like looking to get a line
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: and kill line. Did that feel? Are you like, oh,
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: this is gonna be more fun than normal or is
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: it just all the same to you? Um? Yeah, somebody's
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: shooting a cat out of that's pretty sort of anti
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: climactic too, Like, I don't I'm not like excited to
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: go get a line. I'm excited to tree a line,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: But if somebody wants to kill one, it's just it's
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: an one more step, you know. It's then you've got
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: to deal with the hide and the meat and everything else. So, um,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: it's different than I guess. I get asked a lot
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: like well, even Stacy asked me, like, why why do
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: you have to go kill all these deer? Let's just
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: take their picture. Wouldn't that be the same. It's like, well,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: not really, it's not the same. But for cougars, it
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: it is the same. It's almost more rewarding for me
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: to just get a picture of a cat and let
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: it go. It's not that way for any other species.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: It's kind of strange for me. I don't I don't know. Um,
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: but now somebody's shooting a cat. I don't get that
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: excited about it. Kind of whatever. I know that, you know,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: a lot most hunters, I feel like they want to
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: get a cat at some point in their life. And
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: I get that. I understand that. I've I've got a
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: big one, um that I killed for whatever sport. How
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: many years ago, Um, it was a long time ago.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: It was. It was actually whispers first kind of solo cat,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: and it turned out to be a big you know,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: Poont and Crockett Tom. It's just kind of a special cat.
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: Whisper struck it and ran it and treat it. Do
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: you regret killing that line? No? Yeah, I think the
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: build up and want to hunt one is a real
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: gradual for me. Yeah. You know, like even when I
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: first saw you know, I saw a handful of lines
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: in the wild. Um, when that first happened, I was like, man,
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: I'm dying to go on the mountain lion. Because after
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: a long time, you know, okay, almost a couple of decades,
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: of looking at their tracks, seeing a handful of them
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: that eventually I'd like I had this like like I
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: really wanted to go on line hunt, you know, and
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of it was just to just to really
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: get a look at one, because they're so like you
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: just glimpse them, you know. It was like, Yeah, the
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: moment I walked up, I wanted a tree. I was like,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: holy shit, I mean, that's exactly what I said, Like,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: there's one just standing there and it seems like bigger
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: than life, you know? Was that the first one you've
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: seen a tree was the one when we were with Bart. Yeah,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: when they jumped him and three trees. You got a
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: lot of lyon looking there him in three trees. Yeah,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: I've never seen one in a tree before. Yeah, we
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: should talk to you that hunt because it's interesting. But yeah,
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: seeing that line for the first time, it's surreal. So
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: we went out and Bart found the track. We're hunting
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: in the Idaho Paine Handle, and the first morning we went,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: we went out um on an area had a ton
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: of white tails. Yeah, a lot of shiploads of white tails,
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: and they're not always there. Obviously, it was deep snow
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: up above and they moved into that winter range. Yeah,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: like the snow up high because we later went up
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: hind the snow up pies ball deep and there's deer
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: to spend time up in that zone. And as the
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: snow was coming deer and moving down, we're just find
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: like concentrations of deer. And you found a track cutting
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: the road. You found a track crossing the road of
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: a traveling cat coming out of that high country and
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: we're on snow machines and one of these that guys.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: One thing you guys did that I thought was interesting
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: was rather just being like, holy sh it, let's let
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: everybody let the dogs go. You went as best you could,
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: checked a couple other areas where you could get on
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: roads with snow machines to see if that if there
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: was an obvious place where that cat crossed another road. Right,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: that's and to look for wolf track. That's right. There's
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: two parts to that. So we always want to find
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: the freshest track. And you know, sometimes you can kind
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: of guess. Bruce is very good and he's been hunting
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: up there forever, so he can kind of tell you
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: what the cat is going to do, especially if it's
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: on a you know, big travel um. But the second
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: part of that is finding looking for wolf tracks and
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: sign and if we have any idea that there's wolves around,
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: that changes, you know, how we hunt that or whether
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: or not we hunt it. Yeah, because the wolves are here,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: all that ruckus and no come kill the dog, that's right. Yeah,
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: they get territorial and they hear the dogs coming. That
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: can be trouble and to go check for tracks like
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: you kind of some of the roads we looked at
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: were distances of a couple of miles from there, and
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: you're just trying to rule out like, Okay, he crossed
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: this road too, so there's no sense and turn them
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: loose where he crossed the last road, because you're just
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: gonna wind up getting to this point anyways. Right. Yeah.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: The idea is, I mean, ideally we would you guys
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: call it boxing them in, Yeah, hamming him in, righting
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: figure out you know, one piece of ground where that
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: cat has to be, which we don't usually get that lucky,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: but it can still be a huge patch of grown
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: It might be huge. But if you can knock out
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: you know, two or the three sides, you have a
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: pretty good idea either that cat went that way or
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: he's still in this basin or canyon or whatever. So, um,
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: it really saves on dog dogs also, you know we
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: have whatever certain number of dogs whatever, I think we
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: had six on that hunt. Um, if you turn all
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: your dogs loose on the wrong end of a track
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: and they wipe their feet out, like, it takes three
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: or four or five days for them to heal up,
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: so you can hunt again. We'll take care of them.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: What was interesting about this track, the bart phone, Well,
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: he had a bloody foot. So it was interesting because
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: you could always tell, because we ran into a number
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: of lion tracks in the area, you could always tell
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: this one, Dukes, he had a bloody foot. Yeah, it
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: was like it's right rear or something blood want me,
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: It was kind of a mass like it was a
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: weird foot, and um, usually something like that happens. You
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: expected to get better, but a couple of times it
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: like bled worse. Yeah, well you know it's probably just
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: kept it open too. So we turned out on that
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: thing and nothing happened that day. I mean they ran
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: a lion. A lot happened. They trailed thee and found
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: a lion bed and with a different member we caught it.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: We were like right away we found a different line
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: bed and a different line track. That's right. That caused
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: some confusion for us. Um. You know a lot of
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: times those cats will get into spot and they'll start
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: circling and hunting um, and we weren't you know, we
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: couldn't be sure that it wasn't the cat. The dogs
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: were on and they just hadn't gotten to that bed yet.
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: Let's say that cat ran out and did a big loop,
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: and you know, we don't know that they're not going
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: to end up back at that bed a few hours
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: from now after a circle, and so we didn't really know.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: So at that point you're sort of like just trusting
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: the dogs and letting them work work it out. And
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: he's crossing rivers. It was that was the dangerous part
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: of that, which is a pain in the ask because
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: it's um, it's like zero degrees. Yeah, the dogs don't
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: they're not gonna smell it. Were across the water, but
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: it ends up being that they crossed on a log.
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: But it's difficult for the dogs. Like the dogs aren't
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: agile enough to cross the same little brush jam little
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: lion is gonna cross if the dog go in there,
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: they're gonna be in rough shape, right, Yeah, we don't
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: want the dogs falling in the water. And when it's
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: that cold. Um. The other thing I don't I'm sure
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: you remember. Um, there's a pain. The dogs hang up
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: at that crossing, and then we start getting a tree
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: sign and the dogs are far enough away we can't
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: hear him, and it's easy to get excited and take
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: off running down there to see what's going on. Plus
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: they're nearly it turns out there to staying at the
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: bank the river. Can't get across the river. But you
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: have to do that because if one of the dogs
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: is actually in the water and you're getting a tree signed,
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: you better get there quickly to get them gathered up. Um.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: So that first day we spent a little bit of
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: time just walking and crossing that river several times and
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: having pretty tough time of it getting everything lined out.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: And then that cat split out of that river valley
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: on a pretty much a straight line and found another
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: found another bed yep, and the bed this is like
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: he lays on the ground and just kind of melts
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: a little spot into the snow. It looks like a
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: deer bed, something like at the base of a tree.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: I had in my head. I don't know why I
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: had in my head. He would be like, it would
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: just be more of a dramatic sight. It looks exactly
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: like a deer bed, right. It just seems peculiar to
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: have like a line curled up sleeping on the ground
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: out in the open. They'd somehow be more like like
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: a cave, you know, like a big crotch in a tree, which,
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: in fact, he just like, I was gonna lay down
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: right here. I walked up sleep and one time, in
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: the middle of a logging road, I thought it was
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: a dead deer. I was walking. It was pretty it
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: was like, you know, four thirty in the morning of
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: the summer, so it's it's pretty dark, but not pitch black.
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: And I saw the thing laying in the road, and
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: I was scouting for an elk counting spot, and uh,
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: I'm walking up on it, and I'm just getting closer
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: and closer, and I'm finally I'm like, you know, ten
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: yards away before it dawns on me that this thing
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: is it's a cougar, and its sound asleep, and it
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: rolled finally it rolls to its belly. It must have
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: heard me or whatever it rolls to its belly and
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: it just gives me a look for a couple of
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: seconds and bounds off the road. But what a weird thing.
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: It's just sleeping in a logging road and they just
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: laid down to sleep wherever. I guess, like a dear wood.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: One of the ones I ran into spring bear hunting.
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: Um ran into it on a trail. It was coming
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: down the trail, run up the trail and he sees
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: us in books and runs on over to steep ledge
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: and I ran over to the ledge to see, like
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: to watch him then run off through the woods. And
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: I'm watching watching, I'm thinking, how could that some bitch
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: be so fast that he's already clear of all this
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: area I can see? And eventually I looked down and
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: he just like feet away. Yeah, he's went and tucked
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: in under that little ledge. And I'm just standing there
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: looking out over with no idea. He's just standing down
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: there looking at me. Do when it made eye contact
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: him with me? Booked? Yeah, but you just can't. He's
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: just like he's just like I got his way till
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: this thing passes by, You get is like surprised, just
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: like when you visualize these things is now what you
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: meant how you imagine them operating, you know, But as
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: we're chasing the line that day, what else do you
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: what else happened that day in your mind that you remember.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: Remember it got to be toward dark, and you guys
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: really wanted to get the dogs rounded up because it
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: was so cold. Yeah, it was too cold. Um to
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: leave dogs out overnight for sure, which you hate to
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: leave dogs out overnight, so you don't like to do that,
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: even if it's warm out with wolves and everything else.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Is just not a good idea at all. Um, So
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: we like, it would have to be a really unusual
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: circumstance to leave dogs out overnight. So um, we ended up.
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: Remember we ended up in that nasty swamp and that
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: just had terrible losses in there. The cat has circled
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: and there was another cat in there, we think, and
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: there's old tracks and fresh tracks, and the dogs just
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: really had a hard time moving through that. Once we
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: finally got them lined out, they got to that roaring river.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: Remember the water was really high and it was going
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: to be a very dangerous crossing and we're afraid that
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: dogs were gonna get down in that, So we pulled
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: them at glass light and then of course it's a
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: whatever thirty miles snowmobi all ride in the freezing cold
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: to get back. So we don't want to be doing
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: that too late at night either. Um. So yeah, the
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: first day we spent I don't know how many miles
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: we covered or how many of the dogs covered. I
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: should have checked, um, but it was quite a I
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: mean it was like I said, a traveling cat come
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: out of that high country. Yeah, I feel like they
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: moved the track three miles. Yea. The next day we
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: go back up there, and you guys didn't want to
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: go in and just go let the dogs go where
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: we quit the night before, because of that river. You
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: wanted to do more, kind of like trying to find
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: out if the cat moved more if you cross another
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: road right. And there was so damn any deer in there.
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: It was hard to like because there's so many deer
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: like beating trails everywhere. It was hard you realize you
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: could miss line tracks. Well we did that costs us. Um. Yeah,
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: we spent all day back in that swamp. You and
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: I walked through there and found um, you know, cat
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: tracks going every direction everywhere, and dog tracks tracks were
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: there some moose tracks were there, and dog tracks were
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: everywhere with them. Um, they just didn't have a good
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: track to follow. There's no obvious direction for them to go. Um.
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: And then when we found that out track, that, I mean,
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: that was the savior. Once we had that, we could
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: you know, I think that we were moving in the
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: right direction finally. And that was interesting because, uh, Bruce,
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: another hound has been Bruce. He checked some of the
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: same areas a bunch times and eventually knew there must
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: be an out track, and events you found an out track.
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: And I'm telling you what, nine percent of American hunters
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: would not have found that track. No, it was I
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: would found that track. It was on top of all
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: those deer walking on I mean that deer, the deer
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: in there. It looked like a feed lot. There were
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: so many things it did. It really did look like
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: a stockyard. So it looked at the fact that he
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: like picked that track up on that ship kind of
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: blew my mind. You guys, I hung with Bruce a
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: lot that day because I think that's when you guys
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: were kind of walk in that one of that final
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: kind of side of the box to make sure he
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: hadn't gone I don't know what direction that was south
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: maybe anyways, but I was with Bruce and I can
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: tell you he ran that one section of the road
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: half dozen't maybe even ten times until finally he just
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: kind of was sensing something and he told Gary and
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: I he was like, you guys, just stare right here,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: don't do that stone we go around anymore because he's
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: starting to think like we're gonna cover up this out track.
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: And then, you know, I think it was one in
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: the afternoon when he when he finally cut that track. Yeah,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: I was getting on in the day when we finally
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: figured that out. And the problem is it's a it
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: was a small area and you you know, you try
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: to hem them in and do you think it's temmed
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: into this small area? And then all of a sudden
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: you have dogs running all over the place in there,
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: and you're thinking, are these dogs just absolutely worthless as
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: they got in there and they can't get it caught
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: or or yeah, but he was left and then came
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: back in again and stuff like that. So it's confusing
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: a ship. But when he found that out track, you
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: caught loose, then right away your dog's got confused up
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: the hill and you go up there, there's a giant
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: freaking white dead white tail. Yeah. So they ran up
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: with a few hundred yards and find that kill and
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: again there's cat tracks all over Bex. He's been feeding
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: on it. Um yeah, frozen, pretty much stripped clean, white tailed,
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: but still some meat on the neck, neck twisted around
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: a bunch. Oh yeah, totally busted. And he killed him
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: like that, probably like you know, turned his neck and
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: killed him, or in the process of dragging him all over,
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: Holy hell, grabbed him. But he was probably going back
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: because that wasn't brand new. He's probably going back into
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: some other line killed and he was checking out and
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: he just went back to check on his frozen kill. Yeah.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: And how often do you find kills chasing all the time?
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you follow the line tracks very long,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: you're gonna find a kill. They're either eating on a
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: kill or they're about to go make a kill. Like
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: if you fall around very long, you're gonna find something. Yeah.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: My friend Floyd, where he talks a lot about the
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: reason he's always hoping to find a kill is because
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: the cat might just lay up. Yeah, we had that
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: last week. Um, we were hunting up there and uh,
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: had a track that was just going all over the place,
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: circle and circling, and we had it hemmed in and
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: there's like a little narrow band like two hundred yards
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: that we hadn't checked. It's like, well, that cat, there's
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: either an outrack there that cats somewhere in there. So
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: Rick took off with the snow shoes on and took
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: off walk in the last little bit of this place
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: out and he gets on the radio and he's like,
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: turn the dogs loose. I just jumped the cat off
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: a kill. So he walked up on this cat and
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: it was just laying on top of an elk. Yeah,
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: and uh, we were only three hundred yards from him,
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: so we opened all the dog boxes and they're all
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: just like standing around like you know that, what do
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: you want us to do? And Rick's holler and and
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: finally they got the idea to go to him. And
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: the minute they got to him, of course, they just
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: blew up and ran the cat and had it treated
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: with and you know four yards um. So yeah, I mean,
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: you walk walk their tracks right far, you're gonna find
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: a kill somewhere. It's amazing that those things a hundred
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: forty pounds whatever you can kill those pounds. This is
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: like a pound female. We just took pictures and let
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: her go big, a nice mature female. You didn't put
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: a collar on her. That was up at rix. We're
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: just okay, just I got you, I got you. What
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: what kind of elk calf cow? Mature? Yeah, yeah, nine
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: pound female killed that thing. So back to the one
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: we got. You go up there and it was kind
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: of a mess of tracks. Yeah, there's a lot of tracks.
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: You messed around there a long time looking for the
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: out tracks. That's like an interesting thing about running lines
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: is the dogs are doing so much of this, but
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: there's certain things that dogs are never going to figure out.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: Look if if you got a line and he kills
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: a deer and he like leaves and goes on some
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: big walk about, comes back, eats more of the deer
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: goes out a big walk about, comes back, sleeps, eats,
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: the deer goes back to some place he'd been the
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: day before. It comes back to the carcass, and you
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: pick him up on one of those forays, right, and
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: you trail him back into where all of a sudden
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: he's coming back into like the center of the spokes
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: on a wheel. Oh, I mean, the dogs has gotta
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: be bewildered by it. And that's where like being an
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: expert tracker, a human being, expert tracker needs to commit
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: and do something deductive reasoning about what in the world
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: is going on here, and then find that track that
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: seems the most fresh, because the dogs, like are good
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: at knowing a fresh track, but they're already feeling like
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: they're running it, you know, and they could be going backwards.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: I mean, they could be doing any number of things
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: wrong because the dog don't look at the track and
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: tell what way it's going, which is one of the
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: things that makes one of the other two times I've
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: gone down to hunt lions unsuccessfully in the desert in
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: Arizona is there's not a lot of saying for them
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: to leave tracks. There's a lot of rock and there's
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: no snow, and the dogs can't tell the way the
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: lion is going, So right off the bat, there's even
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: if the dog strikes it starts baying, there's a chance
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: they're going in the wrong direction. Yeah, until you can
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: find a track. And again that's where it winds up
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: being that. That's why the handful of houndsman that I
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: have countered, have been the best sign readers I've ever
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: been around, because they find tracks no one's gonna find. Yeah,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: if you can, Floyd does it from the top of
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: a damn mule. He finds tracks you'd never see if
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: you were crawling on your hands and knees. It's just
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: like there's like a you look at it so much,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: you're gonna treat very few cats if you can't find tracks, Like,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: if you can't identify tracks and figure out what's going
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: on and when to pull the dogs and when to
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: help the dogs, you're just not gonna have any success. No,
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: A lot of these tracks aren't like, oh yeah, big
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: claws and ship. No, it's just like nothing. Like you
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: might see the heel or just one part of a
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: track or whatever, and the area is creamed with dog tracks.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: At a passing glance, there's a lot of similar to
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: the passing. There's a lot of similarity between dog tracks
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: and line tracks, even in size, right, you know, I
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: mean like a passing similarity on dry ground for sure,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: cat track cat feet aren't that big um in the snow,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: they leave a bigger track because they've got a lot
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: of fur and they snowshoe out sometimes and things like that.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: But when you just see a cat step in fairly
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: hard sand, their actual pads and toes aren't that big
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: average average with being um, you know, three inches or something.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: They're not. Yeah, they're just not huge feet like people think.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: So you went up into that kill area and got
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: that sorted out once once, did you at that point
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: be like, oh, we'll catch this lion today. Well, I'm
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: like that all the time, but I thought I knew
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: that our chances just went way up. But it was
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: late in the day that was the problem, and the
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: cat was going you know, weird. We still hadn't gotten
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: him jumped, but we were tracking him straight up that mountain,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: up that deep canyon, which is good because he was
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: finally leaving this that's what we're possibly leaving, this cluster
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: fuck of ger tracks and line tracks and dead deer
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: and lion beds. We wanted an actual out track, and
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: that the way the dogs moved that. I don't know
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: if you remember the noise and how fast they were going,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: but when they're doing that, you have a pretty good
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: idea that they're on like today's track. Yeah, that's the thing,
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: is that what these guys do uh. We would periodically
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: see a line track and you kind of check it
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: out walking a little bit, you know, try to make
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: some ideas about how big it might be and what
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: the snow like, whether it had time for even there's
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: no new snowfall, Snow is always blowing down out of
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: the trees, so you're looking at like, has snow had
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: time to blow in there? Has the track kind of
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: eroded from wind? And the thing I would watch you guys,
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: do you just take a dog? They put his nose
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: in there, and you could tell a lot about how
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: old that track is by his enthusiasm, right, Yeah. They
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: seem to kind of know like, oh, he's showing me
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: a track. Oh yeah, no, that they know exactly what
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: we're doing. And you can start to learn your dogs too, um,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: especially like Whisper, my old dog. I've been doing that
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: with her for seven or eight years now, so I
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: know what I'm going to get on a fresh track.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: And if she just loses her mind, it's like, all right,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: we're gonna get this cat right away. It's super fresh.
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: If she's sort of tapping about it but wants to
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: take it, it's probably you know, it's probably that day's track.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: But if she starts moving it silently, then it's like,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna have some work cut out for us. Now,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: Like a humor, you would check this track out there
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: to figure out pretty quick, like what the dog, how
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: the dog reacts, And not all dogs are created equal.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: Some of them just freak when they get one particle
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: to cougar center, but they learned to be more skeptical
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: when they get older. At least that one didn't. No,
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: not necessarily, you just learn, you learn how they respect
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: their personality. Yeah, so when you got that sorted out
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: by that book, they took off, oh yeah, and Whisper,
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: Tipsy and Gus were on that chase. And they're fast dog,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: especially gust and Tipsy. Um. And when they start on
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: a fresh track that they're gonna get that cat moving
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: and they're gonna catch him, um pretty quick. They're super athletic,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: fast dogs. Um. So that was the right group to
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: have with that cat, especially the way he acted once
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: he was treated. Um. Yeah, when they lined out from
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: the kill though, I had a pretty good feeling that
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: we were going to get him up. I just did.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: I was hoping it was still because like you know
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: what we're like right at the summers, right at the
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: winter solstice, so you had like very short days. And
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: that's the thing. You know, everybody you know who hunts
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: waterfowl his eyes very aware of like legal shooting light.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: But you know it spelled out Alaska doesn't do it
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: because the days are so weird and the light periods
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: of the photo periods are so strange. But yeah, I mean,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: you gotta find that thing. You can find it a
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: perfect daylight, but you can't shoot, right, I should say
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: perfect daylight. But you could find it in light that
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: you could shoot him, but it'll be illegal for you
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: to do so. Yeah, for sure. It's different than like
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: a deer that's a hundred and fifty yards away or
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: something that at the same time you wouldn't be able
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: to make the shot of cats in a tree. I mean, yeah,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: you're gonna find a way shoot it if you want
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: it to um, but you can't. But you can't put
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: artificial light out it either. Yeah, so not that was matic.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: You can't legally do it at dark anyway. It's not
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: like predator hunt like Kyo hunting area where you can
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: use the artificial light. You can't use the artificial light. No. Um. Yeah.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: So once the once they lined out like that, we
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: had it was a little bit of a race against
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: time to to get that cat in a tree and
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: make sure we can get to him, which you know,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: we had to drop back down off that mountain and
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: snow machine all the way back up to the top
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: and then come down the mountain to him. And we
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: got we got to that thing. Now, it had snowed
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: a lot, and it was like a like a fine
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: fine powder and it was not a breath of wind.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: So all that snow is hanging in the trees and
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: it has just been like consistently very cold, consistently not windy.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: So like the entire snowload, when you're under like a
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: canopy of big trees, it would be almost like bare ground,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: you know, just like a dusting of snow that all
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: that snow is still up the tree. And in that
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: line we show up there and he's up in the tree.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: On how high he was, he's pretty high upen the tree,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: but he was on that steep hill where you're almost
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: looking straight at him. Yeah, I was eyeball to eyeball
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: with him coming down the mountain toward him. And he
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: was fine with the dogs blown. We showed up and
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: he pitched out of that tree, and it's like it's
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: stuck in my mind as one of the most surreal
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: things I've seen, next to a time I had a
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: mountain go fall off a cliff and standing above it
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: watching it go was like locking in my mind. But
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: the way that thing just bailed out of that tree
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: and sent down a shower of that powdered snow and
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: hit the ground at a full tilt run, it didn't
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: mean anything. Time didn't like, yeah, it was just like
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: like he does it every day if he needs to.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: He's sort of like rode the bows and then this
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: sort of like cascade of powder, you know, almost like
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: just snow everywhere. Man, you couldn't have planned it better, though,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: to get away from those dogs. I can imagine being
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: a dog underneath there and just getting all that powder
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: in your face. But he bailed out over the dogs.
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Now he ran right, and then he hit
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: a downward slope and just hit it like at a
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: full tilt run. He was going as fast as he could.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: And the bigger problem was he was running his tracks
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: from about five minutes earlier and I thought we'd lose
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: a line, because then he was headed right back down
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: into the into where he came out of and it
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: was getting followed his own followed, his own set of
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: tracks down. We have never lost a lion that way,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: and I was thinking that that might be the first time.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: And it was gonna be because you guys, all the
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: time we're telling me, oh, yeah, he might jump the tree,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: but he'll he'll only go three gonna be we started
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: chasing that thing. Like a mile later, I'm like, somebody
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: just still running. Yeah. Even I looked over and I
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: was like, Oh, I don't worry about it, will be. Well,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: haven't treated four hundred yards? And then oh yeah, and
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: he gets in another tree. We show up there and
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: you can't. You can't shoot the lion in the tree
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: with the dogs on the loose, because you don't want
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: the lion to come down out of the tree and
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: fight the dogs, right, yeah, you don't want to blow
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: him out of the trade of the dogs. Plus you know,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: the time, you have time for you know, people to
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: get pictures, and you get the dogs leashed and tied
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: back where you want them, and you plan this thing
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: so it's a very controlled situation most of the time
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: with your cat, it wasn't he didn't want to stay
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: up at all. No, he bailed out of that tree
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: in an amazing shower of snow. And then that time
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: he did, like you were saying, when three yards and
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: climbed up another tree. We got in there right at dark,
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: and he did not seem like he was gonna stay
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: putting that tree. And when I was thinking about all this,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: like when I was thinking about lion hunting, going into
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: a lion hunt, there's always this idea that and people
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: say it all the time, people who who think that,
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: you know, would ever have like a misguided opinion that
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: there's like no challenge of lion hunting because they think
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: of like, in their mind, the hunting is the shot, right, Yeah,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: there's like the challenge and honey is making the shot.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: But the challenge in lion hunting is reads finding a
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: line in the first dame in place, which is like
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: again people like, oh, we caught a track, and it
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: sort of seems like, oh, yeah, you could a track,
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: easy peasy. It's not. No, it's not. It's not like
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: finding a deer track. You know, there's a line at
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: the other end of the track once you find it.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: But finding the track can be tough, and we've had
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: we've had weeks where we didn't find a line track. Yeah,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: when it's cold and they're lockdown on winter range and
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: they're just not moving very much. We've like literally gone
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: an entire week without cutting a track that we could run.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: So it's not you know, it's not necessarily easy to
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: find a track, although we were finding quite a few
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: while you were there, And um, you know, the cat
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: population is pretty good up there, so finding a track
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: isn't necessarily the hardest part up there. But um, it
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: was the densest lion side I've ever seen in that area. Well,
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: but we caught him on that move too. We caught
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: him perfect conditions, just coming in a lot of deer.
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: But and like in anticipating going on a line hut,
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: a successful line hut, I'd always been like I really
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: was interested in participating in and be watching right, experiencing
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: how hound has been work, which I've developed a lot
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: of respect for the sign reading capability of a good houndsman, right,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: the athleticism of the dogs, Like just see all this
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: play out. I always had a little bit of trepidation
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: or you know, like a little bit uneasy about that.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: You'd get here and here's this this like amazing animal
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: in a tree that you don't get to really see.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: You don't get to really ever look at him. And
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: you'd find a tree and the time would go by,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: and you almost became like familiar with the lion in
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: some way, and that I was afraid that, um, I'm
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: not afraid now that I was like, not that I'm
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: afraid of myself arriving at any kind of conclusion, but
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: I was open to the idea that I would find
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: the lion, you would catch the lion, and then I
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: would be like, man, I don't wanna like this is
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: I'm good now. That was my lion hunt. No need
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: to get a gun involved in this. But I think
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: that after like after jumping it out of the two
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: trees and then finding the third tree right at dark
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: and he was not gonna stay in a tree, it
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: wounded up being like a snapshot. Let's get there was
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: no sort of like thinking about it. You don't want
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: to being like there he is, I m you know,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't I had in my head there's gonna
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: be this sort of big like a like emotional wrestling
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: match about like like everybody says, like shooting the line
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: up a tree. There's a story I told a hunter times.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell one more time. Um. I got a
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: friend who who built this dear blind that he calls
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: the condo. Okay, and he bought a bunch of old
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: pulp land and he and he built uh blind. You
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: can pull in a park inside a garage and then
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: you go upstairs and it's the blind and it's wrap
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: around benches, sleds okay, rolling off his chairs. Electricity and
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: radiating out from the condo are like like laid out
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: like Washington d c are spokes of shooting lanes planted
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: as food plots, so you're in the center of the
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: wheel and there are spokes going out. They have yardage
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: markers on them. Okay. And he's like made the desert
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: bloom out here where he's got like deer in a
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: place that traditionally wouldn't have shipped for deer, like pool land,
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: um in the southeast. But he like these all these
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: food plots, just deer just come in. Okay. We're sitting
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: up in the condo seeing if some buck did you
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: know they know about by name right would show up.
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: I'm telling them about how I'm going to go out
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: to hunt lions in Arizona, and I think at that
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: time was the second time I was going to go.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: And I'm telling him, man, you know, it's just like
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: really frustrating because there's no snow, so you you gotta
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: like just take out and just kind of free cast
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: with the dogs and hopes that the dogs are gonna
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: smell a track and make the right noise that the
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: dog's owners like, that's not a bobcat, that's a lion.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: They're gonna take off. You're gonna do some deduction about
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: like how you know how lions move through the landscape,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: try to figure out what way the lions going. Then
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: you're gonna follows dogs studying the ground for a freaking
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: track to figure out if you went the wrong way
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 1: or not. Then you got a size of thing because
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: you don't want to run a female. You're trying to
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: run a mail and it could be a bobcat and
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: all the ship going on right, and you don't know
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: when the thing came through anyways. And then I'm telling
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: them all this and in the end, you know he's
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: standing there and like in his swiveled off his chair.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: I'm saying, I just don't see the challenge and shooting
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: some line out of a tree. You know, it's like
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: so much like a perspective issue because I'm like, well
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: a lot of guys might look up what we're doing
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: right now and just really failed to see the challenge
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: of shooting white tails out of a house interesting. But
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: it's like a perspective issue. But it was messing with
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: my mind this side. Do you like you're gonna like
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: shoot it out of a tree, which is sort of
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: like a very loaded like there's fish in the barrel
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: and there's ship the tree, right, I mean, it's not again,
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: it's not about the shot. So you even told me
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: that you said something interesting interesting to me to where
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: you were. I called you and I was like just
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out, you know what, Like I'm like,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: you know, this is a goofy question, but what do
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: you imagine total for a firearm? You know, because I'm
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: thinking it's gonna bring like a light caliber sculped rifle.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: And you had said something to me like about you've
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: you've seen it happen, but you had like an opinion
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: about bowl bowl hunting lions. Yeah, that's a weird thing.
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: And I don't know, I mean whatever. People are good
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: with their bows, and bows are super effective. When people
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: shoot a line with a bow, it dies in the
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: tree and it comes out and you know, it works. Um.
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: But it's weird to me when somebody goes on a
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: hound hunt and like enters their cat and the Pope
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: Young record book because they got it with a bow.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah that's what you said to me, you dogs. Yeah,
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like like snuck up on it. It's
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: bed and shot it or something that the shot isn't
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: what should matter, Like the getting has already happened. Yeah,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: it's got like you got it, it's caught. Um you know.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: So yeah, pulling the trigger on the cat. It's sort
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: of the whatever, the anti chimactic part of that. Yeah,
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: I thought it would be. But it want to be
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: in on this yourular situation. It wanted feeling very different
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: than what I imagined it. Yeah, you know, and and
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: then I was like it was I was like so happy.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: Um yeah, I was like really I was really happy
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: to get the line. It was. It was funny because
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: I I'll say to people, you know, people be like, oh,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: you're gonna I'm like, you know, I said, that's probably
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: like the first line I ever got, and I would
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: guess I'm imagining it would be my last line. And
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: people like, oh, yeah, well you didn't like it or
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: something bad happened. I'm like, no, I just it was
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: like a thing I really wanted to do. Um I
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: did it. It's just different than hunting deer milk. I think, yeah,
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: I think if you went, you know, you're always welcome
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: to come out and chase cats with us. I think
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: the next cat you tree, you're gonna look at very differently.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: And that's probably, you know. I have a hard time
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: explaining that, Like people always like assume that hound hunters
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: are just killing every cat they tree, and now you know,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: the shot is like you said, it's just like whatever.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: I don't care if that cat ties or not. I
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: don't want it to die really because I'd rather chase
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: it again next year. And yeah, yeah, get pictures of
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: it and get a look at it and just let
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: it go. Yeah. I was surprised talking to your friend
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: Bruce all surprised about that the quota systems like the
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: idea of managing lions as a big game animal and
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: not managing them as a like varmint right, because some
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: states still do have like three sixty five day a
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: year season and they manage them. They don't manage them.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: They're like get them off the landscape to avoid livestock depredation.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: And that's kind of their approach. Some states Idaho, Montana,
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: some other ones management as a big game animal where
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: they're making like population estimates. Those lions are famously hard
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: to count. They make population estimates on lines and they
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: try to figure out how we can maintain those populations
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: or in some cases probably you can grow those populations.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: And they do it with having female quotas, right, or
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: permit draws. There's a lot of areas of Montana you
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: gotta draw damn lion tag. Oh yeah, it takes time too,
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: and it's like they're competitive. Yeah, Like there's are I
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: put I put it in for before this hunt. I
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: put it in for an area a couple of times,
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: did draw the tag. A matter of fact, I put
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: in for lines three times in certain areas and never
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: draw teg. There's also some over the counter ones, but
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: some of those over the counter areas have a female
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: quota in a total and a total cat quota. That's
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: a good way to manage them. Um. You know, I
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: hound hunters have pushed all those quotas, and that's that's
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: that's what I'm trying to get to tell me, Like
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: the history that that came from. Hell, Yeah, that was
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: an anti hunters that wanted a female quota or a
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: hound quota or the cat quota. It was hound hunters
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: and the reason was the people were killing too many
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: cats and we wanted to have something to chase. Um.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: So you know, we kind of led the way on
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: that protection and it worked. Like there are places that
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: have huge deer elk herds and really healthy line populations
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: where you can expect to cut a track every day.
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: Now I put a picture of the line I killed.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: It was like it was like a good representative example
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: of a male line. It was like a like a yeah,
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: not a nice cat. So I put a picture of
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: the one up there in uh on Instagram and it
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: got you know, like over like well over nine thousand
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: likes on Instagram. So it's like a lot of people
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: looked at it and they're like, oh, that's cool. You
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: really gotta line. Um, there's a lot of like not
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: as the blowback, but a lot of people being like
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: really like wanting to know more. Are you going to
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: eat that big one? Why are you holding it up
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: like that? Okay, so a guy was like, you're not
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: a guy and this is funny. Um My wife even
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: pointed something out because she was kind of looking through
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: him because she's was conflicted about this whole thing too.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: Uh where people like, why would you hold it up
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: like that? Like you don't strike me as a big
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: like trophy shot gripping grand guy. They're like, wow, that's
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: not true because I put up all the time with
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: people with animals all the time. You're just viewing this
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: differently because what it is, you know, and people like
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: being like, why do you why do people pick the
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: line up and hold like that? It seems like disrespectful,
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: Like how else do you I understand? I mean I can,
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: Like the guy was like, where does that come from?
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: Why do people hold lines up by the armpits? Because
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: because just when they're laying on the ground, you can't
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: tell what's going on, that's right. It's the more it
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: is definitely like the traditional whatever you want to call
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: hero shot, whatever you call it, you know it's like
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: grabbing a deer by the antlers and standing back and
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: taking your sure. But I think people like people, A
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: lot of people wanted it to be that I was
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: super sad that I got a line. I'm like, if
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: I was super sad that I got anything, I wouldn't
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: go do it right. It's like you, I set myself
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: out to do something, I'm gonna do it. Looking forward
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: to having the lions rug, I'm looking forward. I'd i'd
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: eaten three damn lions with i'd ever killing one. Yeah,
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: Like guys would give me lines or got a line
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: met one time I got a whole line from a guy,
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: So I'd eating a bunch of line. It was like
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: I was entering unfamiliar territory there. So I'm looking forward
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: to having, you know, the line meatould again. It's not
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: like hundreds of pounds of line meat, but it's like
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: a novelty. It's a really nice break from red meat
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: that you get off deer elk. So like looking forward
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: to that, looking forward to the experience. I'm in an
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: area where lions are like well managed through a season structure.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of lines, But people like I wanted
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: it to be that you were real bummed out that
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: you got a line. And if there is a thing
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: in honey where there's like a remorse factor now and then,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: or like like there's like a there's a kind of
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: a solemn thing with doing it. But I think this
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: idea that that um that you would anyways, why why
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: would you want to go do something that made you
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: so depressed. I was like happy to get the lion.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: So I'm happily holding up the line. I'm not gonna
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: like pretend to be all like, you know, caught in
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: prayer over this dead lion, as though I did some
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: horrendous thing like ran someone's dog over with my car.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: It just wasn't like that. It's like I intentionally set
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: out to get this line. I'm happy about getting the line.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: I want people to see the lion. I'm gonna hold
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: it up and be like, check out this line. The
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: same way when I got married, I was real happy
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: to haven't gotten married to my wife and we had
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: a dude, they're taking pictures of us being married because
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: it was like a good thing that we planned out
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: and it happened, and we were happy it happened. But
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: it just killed some people to be that there's a
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: dude happy with the lion. People are strange about lions,
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: lions predators in general. I may imagine if he were
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: doing with the wolf right, and you would have heard
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: the same thing. It would have in the same thing.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: Just predators that are or I don't I hate to
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: even call it, like a non traditional game animal, but whatever.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: People have been eating lions since people on lions co existed.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: There's a couple of things people trip up about. They're like,
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine eating another predator. And I think that
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: they're saying something different because they're like, you know, we're um,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: we're om divorce. Yeah, they're a predator, but I don't
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: think you really don't want to hone them because it
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: consumes meat. Like, I don't think that's really what you're
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: talking about. All the people say like, oh, they're so old,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: but old like a bull elk, a big giant bull
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: elk is potentially gonna be older than like a cat
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: that one would hunt for and get because you guys
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: estimated based on toothwaar and other things that the lion
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: I got was six years old. A giant bull it
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: could be seven or eight years old. So it's not
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: the age thing. I had another guy point out, the
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: friend of ours pointed out once. I think we actually
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: discussed this that he was like, we're trying to be
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: like why would He was like really upset about the
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: idea that someone would shoot a wolverine. Nothing, I've ever
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: shot a wolverine. We're having a discussion. He's like, oh,
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: they travel so far. We like, yeah, a Carrey, we
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: travel a lot farther. There's Carrey with the migrate of
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: thousand miles. So it's not traveling because we just shot
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: a carry when I didn't bother at all. It's something different,
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: and I think people are really like struggling, like why
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: is it different. There's thirty thousand lions in the American West. Yeah,
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: if you go and look the like, if you go look,
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: it's international conservation status is as low as you can get.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: It's a species of least concern. Yeah. I think there's
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: a more exception, like people think that lions are really rare.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: I hear that a lot, like, oh yeah, people think
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: we're And that's a lot of that. If you hop
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: on you know, any number of sort of activist websites,
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: they'll tell you that they're rare, like they're extrapated from
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: sevent down of their historic rang elk are going from
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: the rest. Right, there are no lions in Illinois than
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: they used to be, Like I understand that, but the
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: Rocky Mountain States we have a lot of lions are
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: not going anywhere. It's a well managed population. Um No
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: in the i u c N status like the international
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: conservation status. I always I was, I always feel that
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: when I look at up I sometimes feel like they're
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: a little bit jumpy, like they give things status like
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: conservation statuses that are unwarranted. And I even was talking
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: to Hotis on the phone. I'm like, I guarantee lions
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: have like a critical or whatever status. But you go
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: on least concern. There's the there a species of least
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: concerned about vulnerability. It's good people with weird stuff. People
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: just get really upset about that ship. There's a bill
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: right now and what Arizona. They want to eliminate the
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: lion hunting season to let because they're killing deer and
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: that's a public safety is you're having too many deer
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: or some it was a guy and of course it's
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: it's it's like, of course he's a he's a Democrat.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: I knew the minute I saw that Bill. I was like,
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: that's gotta be coming from a Democrat. Um. Not to
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: bash on Democrats, but just it's like, you don't see
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: a lot of anti lion hunting legislation coming out of Republicans, right.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: They tend to be more like biology friendly folk when
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: it comes to big game management. But this guy, Uh,
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: we're having too many deer and elk on the roads.
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: We need to stop hunting lions in order to reduce
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: deer and elk because it's a public safety hazard. No,
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: that man is not motivated by road safety. That man
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: is motivated by some people constituents or donors who got
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: a real bone to pickle lion hunting and rather saying
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: can hunt lions as people really like the idea of
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: lions and feel and relate to them, and then the
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: same way they relate to housecats or whatever. Um, so
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: we don't want anybody killing lions. You can't say that.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: You gotta like try to sell it to people on
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: some bogus ship like public because right away Bar pointed
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: out to me there's a time proven way of getting
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: rid of excess deer and out in a very targeted
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: fashion called hunting seasons. Right, and anyone who's hunting in
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: Arizona knows the tags in Arizona not a gimme. Yeah.
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: If there's an overpopulation of deer, I mean, the first
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: thing that comes to my mind isn't too like protect
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: all the predators. It's like, all right, let's address this
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: overpopulation of deer through whatever a hunting season. It's like
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: colde language. Yeah, it's totally yeah, a guy. People are weird,
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: Like I said, people are strange about predators, predator management,
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: especially big ones. You know. They don't worry about coyotes
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: too much or even like bobcats, they don't get too excited.
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: But wolves, cougars and now grizzly bears. This whole conversation
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 1: has gotten big, and a lot of the most vocal
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: advocacy tends to come from the people who are at
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: least likely to run into one. Oh yeah, of course
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: you want to cougar hiding in every tree if you
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: live in Seattle, right, because you're never gonna see one anyway.
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: Ye always talking like New Jersey cat ladies, you know,
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: or getting fired up on behalf. But I think it
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: is I think it's like a you know, there's a
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: different like a different physiological difference between predators and prey
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: is uh, you know, your eyes are centered on your
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: face and you know lying what what it does is
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: when your eyes are centered on your face, Um, you know,
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: you can focus on stuff, like you're focusing on something
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: you're gonna pounce on. Like a deer. He's got like
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: think of an antelope. Deer, Like their eyes are way
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: out to the side of their face. What they're doing
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: is just scanning all the time, and you can see
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: almost behind them. And when you have eyes that are focused,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: like when you have eyes in the center of your face,
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: you're really good at staring at something. And when you
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: see a cat, if you're watch a house cat kind
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: of dodging its head up and down inside to side,
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: he's doing like a death perception thing. He's calculating a
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: distance for a leap, you know, and a praying which
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: this is incapable of that kind of ship. They're really
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: good at detecting movement all over, but they don't folk.
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: It's not any particular thing at all. I think that
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: people maybe see those front facing eyes and empathize with
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: it more. We don't have a lot of because we
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: have it, we have a creditor. How many prey animals
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: you see getting walk around the neighborhood on a leash.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: People just don't to like, like people don't divorce wolves
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: from dogs, which which taxonomically speaking, isn't unreasonable. And people
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: don't divorce lions from house cats. Maybe maybe yeah, or
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: it's a or divorced coyotes from it. Yeah. I think
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: it's the perceived rareness. Maybe. I think a lot of
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: it is that. I think people, yeah, when they think that,
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: like we're out there killing the last cougar in North Idaho. Um,
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: it's easy to get behind, you know, sort of that
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 1: anti hunting action, whether it's just hitting a donate button
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: or whatever else. Um. But in the case the cats
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: were seeing like an unprecedented explosion of line range. Um
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: lines are more be easy. It's almost like it just
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: took them a while to figure out how to cope
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: with people. Now they're like they're reclonizing old places. Well,
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: and I think there's also a lot people are more
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 1: tolerant of predators than ever before. I mean, you're probably
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: talking about the Black Hills. Yeah, Like so South Dakota
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: had kind of like been out of them and now
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: they got you know, they're running a hunting season down there.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: But and a lot of that has to do with
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: exactly what you just said, the hunting season. It's not
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: a environment anymore where and you know, the rural communities
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: are there's not as many ranchers, there's not as many
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: people out farming and out the woods as there used
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: to be. Um, so there's you know, maybe less opportunities
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: for them to get shot at. Yeah, and then you can't.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: And and and the other thing is we're not poisoning anymore
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: like that. And in the old days, you would take
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: a animals did you take like an old mule out
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: or whatever, and shoot it and then inject it with
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: strict nine before it died, so the strict nine would
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: pass through the circultary system and the whole animal you
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: tanged with a shipload of strict nine and then that
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: would be sort of like whatever eats that is dead.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: And we did a lot of damage on predators, Yeah,
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: I mean that's kind of like largely we lost a
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: lot of grizzies that way, a lot of wolves that
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: way in the old days, just poisoning programs, right. Yeah,
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of people have the idea that
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: wolves were hunted to whatever extra patient in the forty
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: eight and it was a lot more than that, you know,
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: obviously bigger picture stuff with habitat loss, prey loss. Wolfers
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: like the old wolfers, commercial wolf harvesters were poisoners. Yeah,
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: you hear about that, like the little wolf bombs or
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: whatever with a little feather on him and the Strict
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: nine that would poof out kill wolves almost immediately they
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: were they were like rained, like they ran basically a
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: Strict nine trap line on the old days. After the
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: kind of like after the buffalo time there a lot
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 1: of guys went to wolfing and then we ran bonies
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: on them. So up until the nineteen sixties, I think
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: Montana had a bony online. Yeah, And there was this
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: kind of this epiphany where you know, again coming from
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: Hollandsmen and others, where they has made a radical switch,
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: like instead of paying people to kill mountains, we're gonna
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: have people pay us to do a limited amount of
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: hunting for mountalins and were to find like a place
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: in our heart to have the animals on the landscape.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: The hounds are the last guys that want to see
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: lions get down. Oh for sure. Actually it was funny, yeah,
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: talking about like letting cats go. Um, I've told you
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: about like seeing cats and talking people out of shooting them.
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: I've taken moose hunters a couple of different times and
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: had cats. We've watched a cat come down to a
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: stream and taking a drink in. This moose hunter was like,
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: oh my gosh, there's a cougar. I wanna you know,
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna shoot him. And I'm like, nah, let's see
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: if it's a tom, you know, because you haven't caught it. Yeah,
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: I don't want him to shoot that cat. What for? Um?
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: So I kind of talked him out of it. The
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: cat out away, of course. And the other day Bruce
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: is right in the snowmobile and he comes around the
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: corner and there's a podcasting in the road, and he
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: has a gun on him. You know, here's this bobcat
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: and he's like five yards away from it. It moves
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: aside and he rides past it, and then he stops
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: and he sees a pair. There's a second bobcat on
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: a deer kill right below the road, like like ten
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: yards away. So here here's this you know, hound hunter,
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: hunting guide, all this stuff. And he said, there looking
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: at these two bobcats. He's armed, and you know, obviously
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: he doesn't want to shoot him because he hasn't he
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: didn't catch it. Yeah, what's he gonna do with that bobcat? Right?
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: So he comes back, he's like, oh, there's a couple
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: of bobcats up there. We can go turn loose on
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: those and like take a chance at him. Um. But
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 1: it's just an interesting way to look at it, Like, yeah,
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: I don't want to. Would I want to shoot a
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 1: line without catching it? Do you think you'll ever shoot
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: in their line? Yeah? I mean I'm sure I will
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: for you know, control stuff for whatever. I just like
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: a hunt, you know, not a big game hunt. Now,
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to really, he's no, you won't. No,
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: I've got no. I'm happy with the lion I've got.
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: Would you do? Are you done? Itch? And know? But
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: I like to, but it's not an itch, you know,
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: what's you're feeling about it? Like like where you at
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: on it? Um? You know, I kind of if I
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: had an itch, I could definitely kind of scratch it
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: by going on that hunt, you know, And definitely seeing
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: that cat, I'd like to go on more. I mean,
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: I've got a couple of friends in Bowsman that are
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: running cats and are you know, sometimes killing them, sometimes not.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: And I've been invited to go out and I'm gonna
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: try to make that happen, just to go see another line,
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: because again, just seeing a line at thirty yards its special, special,
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: It's crazy, you know. Um, But yeah, I don't know.
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, the meats, like you said, the meets
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: kind of a novelty. It's actually great, great meat. I
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: mean we served it Christmas Day at my house in
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: laws there with it. Dude, they loved it. I was
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: I was like really serving it like you know, trepidation,
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: like I don't know, man, And I mean that's the
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: hadn't even been like chopped up. We just took the
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: lid off, the Dutch off and there's my mother in
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: law sticking her fingers and it's like it's like the
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: best pork. Yeah, it was awesome, Like it got gobbled up,
• 1:35:11
  Speaker 1: like it's really really good eating. You know. But I
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: wonder if that's not part of the reason that like
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: people have that big problem with the wolf in the
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: Mountain Lion because it's just not known as like a
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: common food source. But it's not. It's it's just the
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: food thing is kind of novelty. Like I I like,
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: I think of myself as like I kind of in
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: large measures, like live off dear meat. Yeah, for shere
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: moves elk. I got like it's we are always eating
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: dear meat. So someone say, like, you know, here's this predator.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: What this predator focuses on is he eats a lot
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: of deer and elk and moves meat like he eats
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: a lot of umulate meat. It would be weird and
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: now and there and I'll have like these little bonus things.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: But when I sort of like map out my future meals,
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: you know, I just imagine that I'm like a being
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: that consumes venicone. I think it would be even as
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: a hound on her I think it would be strange
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: if somebody was like, did you get your cougar this
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: year the way they do your deer or your elk
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: or whatever, you were like living off cougar meat, that
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: would be really weird. Yeah, definitely don't. I can't imagine
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: I can started living off cougar meat. Even if you could.
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: It's just I just like, you know, I'm a specialist.
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: I guess on prey. But yeah, I've been saying I'll
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: never go again. But see now I have a few
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: bonus points in Montana you need to go. You're curious
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: about that seely Swan area, because that's where I saw
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: my first line. Yeah, I love that area, so you
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: can see. Maybe I'll do me a little lion hunt
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: over there someday. I don't know. You've got tight and that.
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: You know. The nice thing about lion hunting is you
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: don't have to shoot the cat either. You can run
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: cats and tree cats all week and yeah it's not
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: it's a potentially non consumptive hunt. Yeah, I'm pragmatic fellow
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: man like mountain like mountain climbing. I have like a
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: lot of respect for alpinistent. But you know, finding me
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: go out there, going up there just to go out
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: there and say I did it, it's like I'll do
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. But it's like like a big
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: motivation for me. It's you know, I'm like a practical
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: guy man, Like just set your goal at getting pictures
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: I could. Yeah, it's different than deer nowk though pictures
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: of them are no fun when you when you got
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: your first lion out? Was it because what? Because you
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: wanted to have a line. How do you want to
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 1: get a line? Uh? Both. Before I had hounds, I
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: would have like shot a lion if it had walked
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: in front of me while I was deer hunting. That
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 1: has changed. I wouldn't do that now. Um. But I
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: grew up around hounds, and I knew I wanted hounds.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: So when I got my first dogs, you know, I
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: moved from the Midwest where you're hunting wreck wounes out here,
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: and obvious choice here is lions. Um. So once I
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: got dogs, I still hadn't killed a lion. Um. Once
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: I got dogs, then I was like, I had to
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: train the dogs, had to do all these other things,
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: and I knew eventually I was going to catch a lion,
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: but it took took a little time. I trade lions
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: the first year. Oh yeah, not easily. It was pretty hard.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: It was hard training because the dogs were up to
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: it yet, or you weren't. I didn't know anything. I
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: didn't know what I was doing. Um. You know, I
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: had a couple of friends that had been around it,
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: and they helped me some. Um, but I didn't have
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: a finished dog to train Whisper, so I'm you know,
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: without trying to figure out these tracks. The first year,
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: I didn't even have snow machines, so I was like
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: park and walk in with snowshoes until I got a
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: track and start walking with his dog on a leash
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: and try to like pet her when she did things right.
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: And I had a Border Collie trotting along next to me.
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: It was a show or GPS. UM. The first year
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: I did not. The second year I did UM and
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: we actually treat a few cats that way. And I
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: had it from like I said, I had a first
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: head on striking out on snowshoes and getting on, but
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: it's a that's a really really hard way to do
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: it and low success rates. I think I treat you know,
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 1: one or two that way. UM. I had problem females,
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: which makes sense. They're just more dense, densely populated. UM.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: And then once you know, I got I picked up
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: a couple more dogs, and Whisper was coming on and
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: got the GPS and I was starting to feel more
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 1: like a like a legit hound on her after a
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: couple of years. UM, but I think I was in it.
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: I don't know, two years or something, three years before
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: I caught that big tom, And it was kind of
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: a special deal the way it all worked out. So
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: that was your first line, That was the first one
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: I killed. Yeah, I try had treat and released several
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: cats before that, kind of How did you grow up
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: with uh English red ticks and blue ticks that chased coons? Yep, yep,
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: when you were running coons where for price is good? No, no,
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: we made up for that with quantity. Nobody was running dogs.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: Nobody was really trapping much. I think. Yeah, so you're
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: you know, you're getting ten fifteen bucks a piece or something. Well,
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: if you had a good night, you had a pile
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: of raccoons, Yeah, we got four one year. Yeah that's
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: pretty good. That's a big here. But then you said
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: your dad has now switched dogs. Yeah, he's running beagles
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: now for rabbits. Yep, No, your dad don't hunt, Stepdad. Okay, okay,
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: so stepdad's running beagles he uh yeah, he's like a
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: non consumptive hunter now just runs rabbits all day. He
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: runs rabs with beagles and doesn't shoot the rabbits. Nope,
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: it doesn't even take a gun, which brings us all
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 1: the way back around to the whole, Like Ronnie Baby
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: the dogs after a while and be like, I'm not
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: hung this guy anymore because they're good dogs. They don't
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: need to catch the rabbit, just like they don't need
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: to chew on it too, you know whatever, Well, they
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: like to chew on it. They like to see it. There,
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: you get to see it. I'm not blaming the dogs.
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: I don't care. I'm just I'm surprised as the dogs
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: after what I learnt, Like, man, you know, their asses
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: off here and no one's doing anything about it. I
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: don't know. I guess they just don't need to they
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: do anything. You want to add, Yeah, I added, I
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 1: added that Barne I talked about that earlier. I thought
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: that was interesting. You know, the non consumptive rabbit houndsman. Yeah,
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: this is like just the guy that loves his dogs,
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: loves his hounds, loves the chase and the pursuit, and
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: then at the end of the day, it's like load up,
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: no cleaning, let's go. Yeah, I guess he's chicken breasts. Yeah,
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: it's easy to get permission on private property too. Don't
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 1: have a gun and you got a dog, that's like
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: big enough you put it into purse. You're not that threatening. No,
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: you're not. You're not. You're not dipping into the game. Pop.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: They're like standing around in the field and letting the
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: dogs work contail permissions. We've had, um, you know, back
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: home in Michigan, we had like really good luck getting
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: contentail permissions. Yeah, you never like really like wanting for
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: contail spots because you're hunting the winter. No one's out
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: after dear more and more. People don't really care about
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: small game, right, Yeah, if you can do it during
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: the off season for the big game stuff, nobody, nobody's
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: gonna get to People always let us out rabbits. Not always,
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: but we had a lot of places not rabbits. You
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 1: got any eighth final concluding thoughts you want to add, Park,
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: I can just add a little bit to mine, please.
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: I don't feel like now that we did that hunt,
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: I'm actually more interested in do anyone because I sort
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: of had my um, you know, my question not not
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: on your questions, but just I had these like even
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 1: just explaining that chase part, you know that like the
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: dogs aren't actually chasing the line from most of the chase. Yeah,
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: that was a real sticking point for you. Yeah, you
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: were hung up on that for a long time. Well,
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: I feel like because when you talk to people, people
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: just don't understand. They think the lions, I'll do all
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: this evasive act or he's doing all this evasive activity
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: and like trying to like shake the dogs. And why
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: you hear that too. You hear that from you know,
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: the groups about Chase is the cat to exhaustion, toil,
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: they can't go any further than it climbs the tree,
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 1: And that's not really accurate. We rarely have cats panting,
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: even they're just standing there our cameraman. We're like, we
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: kind of brought that up for the first time. They
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: were like, yeah, that's what happens. Like, No, he's got
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: all these tricks and he's crossing and recrossing creeks to
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: lose the dogs where the red fern grows, that kind
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: of stuff. Like. But now that that's been cleared up
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: and I'm not really gray about how it all goes down,
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: and the fact that we ended up having such a
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: you know, real pursuit like hunt in the end where
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: it was me, Corey, you and Bruce, I mean, for
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: fall on down the hill. I mean I watched Corey
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: rolled ten yards down the hill and somehow protect his
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: camera but you know, fully lathered up and sweat, you know.
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: And we're like halfway through and Bruce looks at all
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: of us, He's like, every here, all right, we gotta
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: really turn it up happening, you know. We're like, man,
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 1: you know, and we had this real pursuit. Were at
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: the end You're just like, you know, yeah, like, I mean,
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: it's wild and um just because again and everybody in
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: their mind has this idea that some oh boy just
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: gets out of the pig on truck and walks ten
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: feet into the woods and he's like, oh they're lying,
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: and just wasn't like that, you know, And so um, yeah,
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: I do see myself at some point killing what, you know,
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: But I'm not like I should just go ahead and
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: do it right now because I have the opportunity, you know. Yeah,
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: at this point, I think I've spent we're close to
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 1: Bart obviously like a like a percent of Bart's time,
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: but I've spent or teen or fifteen days following lion hounds,
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: and um caught a line was there for a lion
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: to be caught? And I through all that. If you
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: were to like put my um, you know, if you
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: were to put my appreciation for what goes into a
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: lion hunt on this sort of graph, it would be
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: this like this, like lion that goes up at a
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: forty five degree angle, like higher and higher and higher
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: for my appreciation for lion hunters in lion hunting, um
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: just like a steady increase. I never saw any aspect
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: of it, maybe like suspicious of it or be like
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: you know, it really is just not fair. I mean
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: it's like it's it is a if you're looking at
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: like a challenge thing, uh skill set mhm. It mad
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: be different too if you weren't able to hire a
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: guide to do it. I mean, thank god. I mean
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: think about it. If it had to be that way,
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: if like when you got a tag or you wanted
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: to go kill a lion, you weren't allowed to do
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: it with a guide, you had to like do it
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: on your own. Maybe no freaking lions getting killed, like
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: you said it took you. Sure you treat a couple
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: that first year, but like think about the effort Washington
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: grab a couple of dogs, yeah, and to stay like
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: Washington where you don't have hound hunting for for lions,
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: they basically giveaway lin tags everyone that buys a deer
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: was it five bucks? Yeah? Because you know and in
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: the states where they in states where you have hound's
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: been in a hound hunting there, you're not like like
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: encouraged to go get your lion thing. In Colorado, you
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 1: got pass the test to get a lion tag. I
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: can get behind that. I think you should be able
• 1:46:42
  Speaker 1: to sex a lion before you are able to go
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: out and hunt them. I mean that's the that's the
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: beauty of the quota system, right. You can you can
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: say there's many females as many males if you wanted to,
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: You could even assign age classes per unit, and you
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: can really manage that with a a lot of precision. Yeah,
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: that's the point we could bring up real quickly is
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: that Washington went from a Holland season outlining honeywood dogs.
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 1: So now they just give away what like five bucks
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: for the tag whatever, and a lot of lines are
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: getting killed, all like the wrong lines were getting killed.
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 1: And didn't she say that there's like a group of
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: houndsman now that are starting to organize to um, We've
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: tried that a few times without a lot of success.
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: But you know there are people, um behind it politically,
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: Democrats behind it, politically Steve Back, Oh, yeah, totally, yeah,
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: it's yeah. Now they we've tried that some Washington's a
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: weird spot because they've, like I said, they've made hound
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: hunting illegal. Um. As a result, they've really increased the
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: number of hound or of cougar permits, and there's actually
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: more cougars being killed now than before. But the age,
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: class and sex has changed. So it used to be
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: like from five I think it was you know, female,
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: uh we're killed. Um, and now it's up like sixty
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: of the cats killed or females, which really impacts the
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: population more. You know, they're they're there, they're the breeding
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: portion of the population. They're important. And you call those
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: guys boot hunters, the boot hunters that dog hunters, right, yeah,
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: you know, yeah, I've read a lot about it, you
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: know this all the aspects of lines and stuff, and
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: talk a lot of people about it, but it's like, um,
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: it's not something that you're gonna like really quickly get
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: a grasp on ideas of mountain lion hunting mountain lion management.
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: The difference is how different states vi lions. Just from
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: my perspective right now, I think that, like I really
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: like the systems of manageing them for longevity as a
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: big game animal. YEP. I think if you can remove
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: yourself from sort of this emotional idea about what hounds
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: and lions do and just manage them like a big
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: game animal, like like Montana does a great job of that. Um,
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: we need this number of cougars killed, um, and remove
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: yourself again from that sort of individual idea of the
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: cat and think about the population. Um. We don't care
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: how it happens, but we need you know, ten males
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: and ten females killed from this unit. Go take care
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: of it. Um. That that would be a more wise
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: way to manage them. Yeah, And they're still running targeted
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 1: predator control, Like if you've got a lion, it's killing livestock.
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of ways in which they go after
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: and remove that specific animal, depending on outside of any
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: kind of season structure. That big cat that attacked me
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: got killed last week by for attacking goats no ship. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: with the collar on him. With the collar on him,
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: they got that, so he's dead though he got tangled
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: up with some goats. He killed five goats and like
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: two or three days and they called another houndsman to
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: come in and take care of it, and he went
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: into kill this cat. It turned out to be the
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: big mean cat and it wooden tree, and it started
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: after him and he ended up shooting it right in
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: the point of the nose, basically at point blank range,
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: as it was like coming at him. Did you get
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: your collar back? The state got the collar back? How
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: far was it from where you guys put the collar on? It?
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: Pretty close within you know, four or five miles no ship. Yeah,
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: he's dead. Yeah, where did you get the school? Yep,
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna you don't want to know it. I've got it.
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: You want to be a goat killer? Yep? Yeah, just
• 1:50:54
  Speaker 1: a short time after the callering. Five goats in a
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: couple of days, so he was killing him at a
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: faster raith than he was able to eat him. Yeah,
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: he's probably squirreling him away somewhere, sticking him on her
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: logs and yah huh, all right, man, Bart wants to
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: get thanks for joining us. Yeah, anytimes, I don't know.
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: You know, we're gonna remember the last time you were on.
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: I was like you have to come back and talk
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: about Lions. I don't know what we're gonna have to
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: have you out of things. I don't know what we're
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: gonna talk about that. It'll be something. Thank you. Yeah,
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: of course